! Pinball Dreams is going to be released for CPC classics !

[dlfrsilver]

The Batman group, of the famed Batman forever demo is back, and they are planning to release a famous 16 bits game from the Amiga, in order to show that what has been done in a demo, will also be done in a game.

Pinball Dreams is a famous Amiga game, hence the choice.

Now, as the guys from the group said :

"After blowing up everything we thought a CPC was able to give, the Batman Group continues to insist on demonstrating that the machine was totally wasted (read completely underused) during its commercial life.

And we warn: " although it will be the most technically advanced game on CPC to date, it's still far from reaching its true potential.

According to our estimations :

- Our Batman Forever demo used around 60 % of the CPC real potential ;

- Pinball Dreams will use around 40% of the Amstrad CPC potential ;

All this while the classic commercial softwares rarely exceeded 10% real potential used."

Well, and for that, they use a now tool they have made for CPC, called Perfect Pix, which allows to have Amiga screens like the ones used on it, in mode 1 on CPC with a tons more colors than the 16 colors you can have normally

check by yourself the CPC screens for Pinball dreams done with Perfect Pix :






Awesome !!!

About Perfect Pix :

Perfect Pix is a set of graphic tools for Amstrad CPC with 3 extended video modes to get images of an unusual quality on a 8-bit machine:
* Mode R -> Up to 384x272 pixels and 16 freely selectable colors from a palette of 27.
* Mode B0 -> Up to 192x272 pixels and 136 colors from a palette of 378.
* Mode B1 -> Up to 384x272 pixels and 307 colors, divided into color 0 + up to 34 palettes of 9 colors per line.

[DamienD]

That is amazing indeed dlfrsilver, thanks for posting the details

[idrougge]

Sounds like a good match for the CPC, which handles vertical scrolling a lot better than horizontal.

[Zetr0]

Amazing!

I really need to finish my IDE mass storage adaptor for the CPC!!!

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by idrougge

Sounds like a good match for the CPC, which handles vertical scrolling a lot better than horizontal.

That's what we knew with the commercial games. Until now. I think some people are going to be forced to revise their positions about the CPC, this due to the discoveries about the total underuse of this machine due to prejudices of some people about Amstrad.




Just to give you a hint about the actual possibilities with the STarkos soundtracker for music, here is the Shadow of the Beast main rendition :

http://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?p...icym&num=11525

As you can hear it, even the Atari ST doesn't even reach that ahaha

[seuden]

Awesome!! Always knew the Amstrad was the best 8bit machine.

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by seuden

Awesome!! Always knew the Amstrad was the best 8bit machine.

Well, having owned one since so many years, it's evident the CPC was great from the start, because it was engineered by great people.

When i said that the CPC has been underused, because most teams used most of their deadlines to get the best on C64 and ZX, the CPC has the nuggets.

The Amiga often had the same with the Atari ST.

Things are about to change now, and for good

[Cpt. Hindsight]

I really hope the people behind this project will be able to finish it. Real life issues like work, family, illness, etc. has stopped a lot of promising stuff in the past.

The C64 preview of Pinball Dreams looked very good as well, but unfortunately there had been no news about it in the past ten years.

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by Cpt. Hindsight

I really hope the people behind this project will be able to finish it. Real life issues like work, family, illness, etc. has stopped a lot of promising stuff in the past.

The C64 preview of Pinball Dreams looked very good as well, but unfortunately there had been no news about it in the past ten years.

Well, from the moment you have the right tools, and people who are coding geniuses, and because they have discovered that the CPC has always been under_employed/underused/wasted for nothing during its commercial life, now things will change !

The best thing is that the original palette of Amiga will be kept, because the CPC palette is of the same kind, and thanks to the use of Perfect Pix

[Higgy]

The Batman Forever demo was very impressive. Looking forward to this.

Just hoping that I won't have to be swapping CRTC chips in order to play it!

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by Higgy

The Batman Forever demo was very impressive. Looking forward to this.

Just hoping that I won't have to be swapping CRTC chips in order to play it!

well the best CRTCs are 0 and 1. crappest is CRTC 2.

Batman Forever works on the most common CPCs, so it should be the same

[Amiga1992]

Interested to see how it comes out, after really trying to like the CPC and getting rid of mine recently :P
The only thing worth having the CPC for was the Batman demo thing.

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by Akira

Interested to see how it comes out, after really trying to like the CPC and getting rid of mine recently :P
The only thing worth having the CPC for was the Batman demo thing.

say thanks to most lazy ass coders from back in the day......

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

say thanks to most lazy ass coders from back in the day......

Nope, not gonna get into this argument with you. But suffice to say I also tried modern stuff.

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by Akira

Nope, not gonna get into this argument with you. But suffice to say I also tried modern stuff.

why do you say that ? It's a very well established truth unfortunately, the Amiga suffered that due to the ST, and the CPC due to the zx and C64 having a stronger market in England.

[dlfrsilver]

Just to give a little demonstration of what has been done lately on sound wise on the CPC with the help of STarkos, here are some musics ported from either Amiga or C64.

use a good CPC emulator for sound

PS : Cybernoid II display the CPC title and music, press Space to get the C64 "colored title" (lol), and the C64 title song rendition.

Tell me what you think about those

[dlfrsilver]

some news check on this screen :




The game is from what Rhino said 50hz vertical scroll with a lot a color on screen.

[Neil79]

[Sir_Lucas]

Here's a second preview of Pinball Dreams for C64 from 2012
http://csdb.dk/release/?id=111246



And a video as well:
[ Show youtube player ]

[hansel75]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

That's what we knew with the commercial games. Until now. I think some people are going to be forced to revise their positions about the CPC, this due to the discoveries about the total underuse of this machine due to prejudices of some people about Amstrad.

Great to see the cpc utilised more now, maybe it is more of a beast then what most people thought, but in the overall scheme of things it's to little to late.

Apart from being a tech showcase that's been 30yrs in the making, it still doesn't make up for the inferior 8bit experience most cpc owners had to endure back in the 80's/90's from dodgy coding compared to the C64.

If only the coders back then had unleashed the true power of the cpc, then things may of been different and the C64 might not have dominated as much as it did.